Mintel’s convenience food market research reports provide a comprehensive and extensive overview of the marketplace including information on the convenience food market size and convenience food market share.

"There remains plenty of scope to build the penetration and usage frequency of ancient grains. Their health credentials in particular are a key angle that operators can leverage given the current low levels of awareness of the nutritional benefits many of these offer over rice."

"After a slight sales decline, the prepared meal category has enjoyed several consecutive years of positive growth, a trend expected to continue. Single-serve and side dishes have fared particularly well, with notable successes in vegetable-based side dishes catering to the consumer interest in ...

"The market for frozen breakfast foods has entered into a relatively stable period of stagnation, with frozen handheld options managing a degree of growth, as they cater to consumer demand for easy-to-use and portable breakfast foods. Interestingly, a chief competitor to the category, restaurant ...

“With needs for convenience and variety well catered for by food delivery services, and Chinese consumers becoming more nutritionally savvy and open to exploring product varieties, frozen ready meals are being consumed for different reasons and on new occasions.”

“That over half of ready meal/ready-to-cook eaters/buyers opt to cook from scratch more when money is tight leaves the sector vulnerable given that mounting inflation is expected to put pressure on disposable household incomes. However, premium products should benefit from people choosing these as ...

Mintel’s Annual Overviews take a look back at 2016 and provide a detailed overview of the key issues faced by key categories through the year. Including; a full market overview, an in-depth review of the big stories from the year as well as our forecast for the future of these markets.

“Convenience and fast to serve are the most common features in the ready meals category, but in fact ‘taste’ is considered as the most important purchase decision factor. Besides the taste, consumers’ interest in ‘additive-free’ products has grown and the claim is likely to become a new norm in ...

“Perception around the overall quality of ready-to-eat frozen meals is a challenge for the category. Turning to category strengths, messaging that promotes ready-to-eat meals as a vehicle for trying new flavours is likely to resonate based on consumer input.”